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My beloved Liz Lemon—er, I mean Tina Fey—isn't the only one suggesting that Sarah Palin's focus has shifted from 2008 to 2012. Today, trying get a jump on the post-election story before the polls even open, much less close, a host of politicos are placing their bets over who will emerge from the broken GOP as the next to be (unofficially) crowned party leader.
When John McCain chose his running mate, he was rightfully lambasted as cynical for passing over experienced insider men for an accessible outsider woman. In the end, he was right on one count: that a swath of the American public—though one which perhaps may not be wide enough to elect him tomorrow—felt so disenfranchised by the people who hold power in this country that they would line up behind someone who reflected and could articulate their own proud feelings of ordinariness. (This profound cultural conflict—rooted deep in issues of education and economics—will require far more systemic thinking than the fuzzy feeling of "unity" Obama hopes to usher in tomorrow and beyond.) Where McCain may have been wrong—and this is big—was in his perception of this election as a game of identity politics.
People have talked plenty about whether Obama is a post-race candidate for a post-race America. I've generally taken issue with that notion—and should he be elected, my heart positively swells with the notion of the descendant of slaves raising her children inside the White House. But by the same flawed token, did Sarah Palin become a post-gender candidate for a post-gender America? Of course, Palin has certainly worked her gender in this race: from that flirty wink and sky-high Manolos to her uber-mom positioning. But like Obama's race hasn't been the totalizing meta-narrative of his candidacy, neither has Palin's gender, and just as this hasn't been an election year for single issue voters, it hasn't been one for single-identity ones either, despite what pundits may have predicted from the outset. We entered this race all aflutter about our first female presidential candidate. We're ending it considering the next one with hardly a shrug about her gender.
While I am hardly a Palin fan, and for myriad reasons shudder to imagine how she might develop with the next four years to study up, the fact that neither her supporters nor her detractors seemed to make a big deal about a female commander in chief (remember those days?) suggests that in unexpected ways, we've come a long way during this long march to Election Day.
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Awhile back I wrote that Meghan McCain had learned to negotiate the difficult terrain of being a political daughter by oversharing on surface-level stuff, and keeping quiet on the truly personal. Looks like she hasn't quite stuck to that-on Hannity and Colmes, she revealed a bit more about the grudges she holds as a political daughter. She's mad about the Atlantic cover controversy, saying"I have a problem when it gets dirty and you're doctoring photos." Most striking is what she said about her support for Kerry and Gore, framing it as more of a vote against Bush, who ran a nasty smear campaign against her dad in the South Carolina primaries, than for the Democrats:
MCCAIN: I can be behind my father all day every day.
COLMES: Sure.
MCCAIN: . until the end of time. I just couldn't get behind President Bush. I just couldn't. It's personal.
COLMES: Yes. You couldn't get behind President Bush?
MCCAIN: It's personal. I was 19 at the time.
HANNITY: And it's a primary 2000.
(CROSSTALK)
COLMES: Hold on, let's.
MCCAIN: It had to do with my little sister, and like, you know, you were just saying that the wounds of a political child run really deep. And there are things that I don't know if I'll ever completely get over.
COLMES: Was it because of what happened in 2000 during the campaign?
MCCAIN: Yes.
COLMES: That you two -- what about your dad now? Is he -- looks like he may have.
MCCAIN: No. He's a great forgiver, move on-er. No. Yes.
Her decision to stump for her dad was obviously one made out of love and personal, rather than party, loyalty. And now she's got to stand there and justify her dad's politically expedient apostasy by saying he's a "mover on-er," and she's got to somehow justify to herself that even though she's been deeply hurt by negative campaigning, it's ok that the McCain campaign isn't exactly taking the high road these days. When I wrote about her earlier, I was impressed with the amount of agency I saw her taking-exploiting the publicity system lest it exploit you first isn't exactly a feminist battle cry, but at least it's not passive. Now, all I can think when I read this is "Poor Meghan, she's trapped." But am I getting played like a flute? Now's probably not a bad time to be reminding people that the McCains have been on the receiving end of smears, and Meghan, at her own admission, didn't go in to this thing a political naïf. This wasn't her first interview, and it wasn't the first time she's talked about the way the 2000 election affected her. Should I put back on my armor of cynicism?
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Rachael is so not our Elisabeth Hasselbeck! And seriously, Ellen, how are we divisive? Au contraire, I'd say we are a model of comity - the U.N. of blogs, really, only with no corruption and no Libya on the Security Council. We've been at this for a year now - come to think of it, why haven't we celebrated that? - and despite disagreeing on minor matters like abortion and war have hardly ever even gotten hot at each other. On no occasion I can recall has anyone been so much as borderline disrespectful, which has got to be some kind of miracle, if you believe in such things, which I do; see how diverse we are? (Or is that too Sarah Palin for ya? Maybe we are the Midwest of blogs!) I guess the bottom line is that I don't even believe there is an us and a them, and think Obama's right when he says that there's not this vast chasm between us at all; in fact, compared to political differences in other countries, our right and left are close enough to slow dance. For proof, just listen to the candidates last night, much of the time saying the exact same thing, even down to telling that one poor woman in the audience that she was understandably cynical. (I was thinking oh, Obama's lost her vote, until McCain came up behind him and called her the exact same thing.) Anyway, happy birthday to us, and to all of you who are off tomorrow, Tzom Kal. (OK, Emily B. just taught me that earlier today; see, we are still learning about each other...)
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Hanna and Rachael, I too was struck by the vulnerability of Ashley that emerged in today's New York Times' profile. I noticed a "primary source" ("Hot Document" speak) for the profile was the young woman's MySpace page, which by "Thursday at noon ...appeared to have been corrupted." If I were Ashley's mother (alas, I could be her grandmother) in addition to making sure she got her own lawyer (attorney Don Buchwald was appointed by the court to represent the 22-year-old—although his bio of has the feel of someone QAT Consulting could really use), I might tell her to also get some technical and PR support that will get that MySpace storefront humming again. (Tips on traffic management are available by checking out Tila Tequila's page.) I can picture the stampede of TV bookers now thundering to the Flatiron apartment leased by the young entrepreneur once known as Kristen. Since her male source of support "walked out on me," and she is clearly "not a moron," she might as well be in charge of her own image as straightforwardly ("listen, dude ...") as she took control of clients at her last job.
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The XX Factor entered a new medium this morning: video! Watch here as Emily Bazelon, Dahlia Lithwick, and Melinda Henneberger talk about what the results from the Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont primaries mean for Hillary Clinton.
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